Blood Is Thicker

(Cliff Paragua, 21 February 2010)

He surprised me with a text message and a short visit last Sunday.

Regie Tamayo, a cousin of mine, went to our place together with his young charming wife, Lalaine, who was in radiant Cory yellow.

Regie has served Aparri, our town in the northernmost tip of Luzon, as a two-term councilor. At the end of his second term, he intended to leave the political arena to spend more time with his family and continue his studies to become a lawyer.

But such was not his fate, at least for the moment.

He stumbled upon the Kapatiran Party, or the party stumbled upon him. Whichever it was, he ultimately found himself in the thick of preparations for the coming May elections, this time as one of the eight candidates for senator of the Kapatiran Party.

He told me that his friends, and even some of our relatives, took the news with raised eyebrows. Understandably, since launching a senatorial campaign is not a joke. It can’t be done with peanuts, either.

But he said that he believed in the party’s platform – an advocacy for change anchored on four fundamental individual decisions.

Regie mouthed his party’s formula for a way out of the country’s darkness: 1] acknowledge that the root cause of the country’s crisis is moral; 2] admit our share of blame for the sad state of affairs in our nation; 3] as a human activity, politics has moral dimensions; and 4] we have to make a personal decision to change for the better.

Well said, but Regie’s and his party’s formula will most likely not make them score any win in the forthcoming elections, knowing fully well that the game is still largely guns, goons and gold. Besides, I think Regie is no politician, in the sense that this word is commonly defined today. He comes from a different mould. He is an unbridled idealist, wanting nothing but the best for this country.

Only a miracle can get him to the winners’ circle of eight. While he agreed with me that miracles do happen, he is ready to accept his ultimate fate, focusing on the positive side of this exciting experience at this stage of his young life.

As he said, he will most likely be one of the “cellar dwellers” after the PCOS machines have done their job. But I told him that I will reserve one of the eight slots for him in my ballot. Iitiman ko ang hugis itlog niya sa balota ko. Sabi nga nila, blood is .....